The contents of my mind at this moment (unproofread)
I should be driving to Sarasota right now to run errands so that I can finish them before things close up for the day and before I have to meet up with Margaret at four, but instead all I want to do is sit here in this room and think and write and merely exist. Lately, I have felt so poignantly and majestically overwhelmed with my life here and my life in the coming months and my life after college and just all that life is or could be to everyone everywhere now and forever. I am so consumed with thinking and feeling that it is almost too much to interact with people these days. This summer was good for me in so many ways. I felt more grown up than I ever have before and was reminded in surprising ways of what I actually want out of life and of how good and sweet the world can be either alone or with people you love. Ever since I was a little girl I remember having this obsession with wanting to real connect with people and wanting to develop truer and purer friendships with people than those of the sort that exist in the real world. This has led me to be turns either feel great disappointment and dissatisfaction with those around me and my inability to connect with them or to romanticize my relationships with others and to spend all of my free mental time daydreaming about them and envisioning adventures that we might have together in the future. I'm not really sure where I am going with all of this. But I guess it is just ironic that someone as shy and sometimes seemingly antisocial as I am is so obsessed and affected by other humans.
The only thing that can affect me as much as the people I love is nature, and even that is somewhat rare. The other day I was driving eastward off the island towards downtown Bradenton over some bridge and I was totally overcome by the sky and the water and the way that the trees on the water's edge came to meet the shore. As September 6th approaches, I fall more and more in love with the Florida landscape everyday. Even outside the window next to me whether there is no truly natural foliage I am enthralled by the majesty of the wind from a far away hurricane whipping outside my window making funny whistling sounds as it bends around the house. It will be strange to live in a city. There will be so many exciting people to meet and befriend, places with more history than almost anything I have ever seen, and exciting things to do every day of the week at all hours. I imagine though that I will probably spend a lot of time in the Parisian parks (even after winter comes and all of the leaves are gone) staring at trees, squirrels, and even pigeons. And I'm sure that when I get back I will be dying to go camping and surround myself with forest, bathe only by swimming in rivers and lakes, and revel in the warmth and humidity that permeates Florida.
The fact that I am leaving though doesn't actually seem real to me at all yet. If it weren't for the constant questions of nearly everyone I encounter about when I am leaving and about the specifics of my program, I would probably forget that all of this will be over in a few days and I will be onto a new phase of life. For some reason the fact that everyone else is starting classes, buying books, and decorating new rooms isn't enough to really make me feel not a part of things. What I wonder, worry, and think most about in terms of my coming trip is how it will change me. Of course I hope that it will make me a person of considerably better character (although logically I can't really see why it would). More likely though, I will hopefully leave France braver and more self-assured than I am now. I want to come home feeling capable of face the next phase of life i.e. post-New College even if I still don't know much of anything about what that phase will entail when I get back. I hope that when I return here, I and the people I care about won't have changed too much to be able to have fun together, although I know that things will never be the same for me at New College again. While I am gone for 5 months, everyone else will keep laughing, crying, and growing up together while I am gone and when I return things will be explained to me in only vague detail such that I will never really understand what everyone was experiencing or what it would have really felt like for me to be here instead of there this fall. To speak more concretely, I will miss Sara's last semester at New College, most of my friends' 21st birthdays, and the last semester before my friends that are my age and I really have to worry about their theses. When I get back though, I hope people will be enthusiastic to see me and that we can have many more beautiful experiences together over our last 1.5 years of college and into the distant future.
To change topics a bit, I have been thinking a lot lately about the role music plays in my life and realizing more and more how important it is to me. It has been my greatest regret for a few years now that I have no musical talent. When I think back on my life over the last few years though, most of the times when I was happiest were intrinsically linked to music and in the majority of these I was dancing...not to show off or to look to cool, or anything....but because I was filled with pure unadulterated joy and the only way that I could express it was through movement. So, I have decided while I am in France that it is a goal of mine to devote more time to experiencing live music (danceable if possible) than I ever have before and to see what affect that has on everything else in my life, even if I don't ever make any friends and I have to go to shows alone.
The other thing I have been thinking a lot about lately is the fact that I want my long hair back. It will take a few years, but I believe it will be worth it. My short hair suited me well for this year, but now I am starting a new phase of life and long hair seems to fit better with what I am experiencing, feeling, and thinking these days.
I guess that is sort of a bizarre note to end this post on, but it seems that for the moment I have written all there is to write and now I must head into town and be productive and see what sort of adventures my last Friday night in Sarasota until 2006 will hold. Thank you for reading all of this to the few of you who actually did read it all.
The only thing that can affect me as much as the people I love is nature, and even that is somewhat rare. The other day I was driving eastward off the island towards downtown Bradenton over some bridge and I was totally overcome by the sky and the water and the way that the trees on the water's edge came to meet the shore. As September 6th approaches, I fall more and more in love with the Florida landscape everyday. Even outside the window next to me whether there is no truly natural foliage I am enthralled by the majesty of the wind from a far away hurricane whipping outside my window making funny whistling sounds as it bends around the house. It will be strange to live in a city. There will be so many exciting people to meet and befriend, places with more history than almost anything I have ever seen, and exciting things to do every day of the week at all hours. I imagine though that I will probably spend a lot of time in the Parisian parks (even after winter comes and all of the leaves are gone) staring at trees, squirrels, and even pigeons. And I'm sure that when I get back I will be dying to go camping and surround myself with forest, bathe only by swimming in rivers and lakes, and revel in the warmth and humidity that permeates Florida.
The fact that I am leaving though doesn't actually seem real to me at all yet. If it weren't for the constant questions of nearly everyone I encounter about when I am leaving and about the specifics of my program, I would probably forget that all of this will be over in a few days and I will be onto a new phase of life. For some reason the fact that everyone else is starting classes, buying books, and decorating new rooms isn't enough to really make me feel not a part of things. What I wonder, worry, and think most about in terms of my coming trip is how it will change me. Of course I hope that it will make me a person of considerably better character (although logically I can't really see why it would). More likely though, I will hopefully leave France braver and more self-assured than I am now. I want to come home feeling capable of face the next phase of life i.e. post-New College even if I still don't know much of anything about what that phase will entail when I get back. I hope that when I return here, I and the people I care about won't have changed too much to be able to have fun together, although I know that things will never be the same for me at New College again. While I am gone for 5 months, everyone else will keep laughing, crying, and growing up together while I am gone and when I return things will be explained to me in only vague detail such that I will never really understand what everyone was experiencing or what it would have really felt like for me to be here instead of there this fall. To speak more concretely, I will miss Sara's last semester at New College, most of my friends' 21st birthdays, and the last semester before my friends that are my age and I really have to worry about their theses. When I get back though, I hope people will be enthusiastic to see me and that we can have many more beautiful experiences together over our last 1.5 years of college and into the distant future.
To change topics a bit, I have been thinking a lot lately about the role music plays in my life and realizing more and more how important it is to me. It has been my greatest regret for a few years now that I have no musical talent. When I think back on my life over the last few years though, most of the times when I was happiest were intrinsically linked to music and in the majority of these I was dancing...not to show off or to look to cool, or anything....but because I was filled with pure unadulterated joy and the only way that I could express it was through movement. So, I have decided while I am in France that it is a goal of mine to devote more time to experiencing live music (danceable if possible) than I ever have before and to see what affect that has on everything else in my life, even if I don't ever make any friends and I have to go to shows alone.
The other thing I have been thinking a lot about lately is the fact that I want my long hair back. It will take a few years, but I believe it will be worth it. My short hair suited me well for this year, but now I am starting a new phase of life and long hair seems to fit better with what I am experiencing, feeling, and thinking these days.
I guess that is sort of a bizarre note to end this post on, but it seems that for the moment I have written all there is to write and now I must head into town and be productive and see what sort of adventures my last Friday night in Sarasota until 2006 will hold. Thank you for reading all of this to the few of you who actually did read it all.